“Jeff would do a lot of, ‘What do you think we should do? Should we rehearse?’ And I’d be like, ‘Nah. “He wasn’t sure, like, what I was going to do or if he was going to embarrass himself,” Shannon says. It was the young filmmaker’s first film and Shannon had been in his fair share of projects already, while most of the rest of the cast consisted of friends and unseasoned actors. Nevertheless, when Shannon first showed up on “Shotgun Stories,” he says Nichols probably didn’t know what to expect. You just luck out, to find people like that.” “‘I know what he’s trying to do.’ We’ve always kind of had an unspoken understanding. “The first time I read ‘Shotgun Stories,’ I was like, ‘Oh, I get this,'” the actor says. More importantly, it was the beginning of a collaboration Shannon very much appreciates. Out of that came “Shotgun Stories” - the 2007 Arkansas familial drama that netted the director awards recognition at festivals and at the Independent Spirit Awards - and it was as simple as a phone call and a “let’s do this” (no deals or payment terms were laid out) to get it going. Nichols saw it, loved the actor’s work and knew he had to write a project for him. North Carolina School of the Arts professor Gary Hawkins had a project at the Sundance Film Festival’s Filmmaker’s Lab some years back called “Down Time,” which featured Shannon. Actor Michael Shannon first met director Jeff Nichols through the latter’s film school connections.
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